14 October: How Does My Brain Hear Your Voice?

The
human voice is the most complex sound with which we routinely deal, and
human speech is arguably unparalleled in nature. Nonetheless, our
brains seem to effortlessly pull information from the speech stream,
extracting the meaning of what we hear as well as information about the
speaker, such as their mood and identity. How do our brains do this,
and how does this interact with the brain systems for controlling our
speech output? Can we learn anything by looking at how non-human
primates process sound? And can we learn anything by looking at
exceptional listeners, such as phoneticians and professional voice
artists?